Source apportionment of heavy metals in the soil at the regional scale based on soil-forming processes

Bo Wu; Linlin Li; Shuhai Guo; Yang Li

doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2023.130910

Source apportionment of heavy metals in the soil at the regional scale based on soil-forming processes

J Hazard Mater. 2023 Apr 15:448:130910. doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2023.130910. Epub 2023 Feb 1.

Authors

Bo Wu¹, Linlin Li², Shuhai Guo³, Yang Li⁴

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, PR China.
² Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, PR China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, PR China.
³ Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, PR China; National-Local Joint Engineering Laboratory of Contaminated Soil Remediation by Bio-physicochemical Synergistic Process, Shenyang 110016, PR China. Electronic address: shuhaiguo@iae.ac.cn.
⁴ Liaoning Provincial Ecology & Environment Monitoring Center, Shenyang 110161, PR China.

PMID: 36736212
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2023.130910

Abstract

Source apportionment is crucial to the prevention and control of heavy metals in the soil. The major methods focus on the identification of soil heavy metals from different pollution sources. However, they are unsuited to the source apportionment at a regional scale due to ignoring the spatial heterogeneity of heavy metal content caused by soil formation. Thus, we built a source apportionment model by introducing the weathering and leaching coefficients as the key parameters of soil-forming processes. In this study, we selected Liaohe Plain in China as the study area, which was the starting point of China's industrial development, with dense industrial areas and high levels of heavy-metal emission. Heavy metals concentrations in surface and deep soil of reference and grid points were collected as model data. The results showed that the average contribution rates of soil-forming process to Cd, Hg, As, and Pb were 82.7%, 85.2%, 88.6%, and 91.7%, respectively, and those of anthropogenic activities were 17.3%, 14.8%, 11.4%, and 8.3%, respectively. Spatial distribution of contribution rates showed the superposition of soil environmental background and pollution sources. This study provides a feasible method to quantify heavy metals contents from natural and anthropogenic sources at a regional scale.

Keywords: Anthropogenic emission; Multiple regression; Soil weathering and leaching; Spatial clustering.